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Most striking about the iPhone 4 is its new design. While the front is classic iPhone with its single piece of glass, single button, and symmetrical black bezel, the back has moved away from the curves of old to be replaced by a completely flat sheet of aluminosilicate-toughened glass (what do you mean you haven't heard of it?!). Combined with the new flat stainless steel sides, this gives the phone a particularly industrial, minimalist look and feel that is sure to split opinion even more than existing iPhones have.
To our minds the concept is sound and we really like the exceptional fit and finish of the phone but certainly the front bezel does now look a bit tired. In particular this seems to be because the iPhone 4 is slightly narrower and taller, yet retains the same size screen, as previous models. This makes the screen look a bit lost in the vast blackness of that bezel. It's still a pretty stunning design overall but there's definitely a prototype/engineering sample feel that takes the edge off.
By severely shrinking many of the internal components, Apple has managed to make the iPhone 4 noticeably slimmer than its forebears at just 9.3mm, and the company even touts it as the slimmest smartphone. Normally we would be concerned about this as the slimmer devices get, the more difficult they tend to be to handle but thanks to its flat sides the iPhone 4 is actually pretty easy to get a good grip on. However, the pointy edges that result from all those flat surfaces make the phone feel, if not out and out uncomfortable, certainly less comfy than many rivals and even previous iPhones. Weight remains largely unchanged at 137g, 2g more than the iPhone 3GS.
“The white iPhone 4 has finally arrived and it’s beautiful,” said Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing. “We appreciate everyone who has waited patiently while we’ve worked to get every detail right.”
iPhone 4 is the most innovative phone in the world, featuring Apple’s stunning Retina™ display, the highest resolution display ever built into a phone resulting in super crisp text, images and video, and FaceTime®, which makes video calling a reality.
White models of iPhone 4 will be available in Austria, Australia, Belgium, Canada, China, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Luxembourg, Macau, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Singapore, South Korea, Spain, Switzerland, Sweden, Taiwan, Thailand, UK and the US, beginning Thursday, April 28 and in many more countries around the world soon. White iPhone 4 will be available for a suggested retail price of $199 (US) for the 16GB model and $299 (US) for the 32GB model with a new two year agreement through the Apple Store® (www.apple.com), at Apple’s retail stores, AT&T and Verizon Wireless stores and select Apple Authorized Resellers.
Apple designs Macs, the best personal computers in the world, along with OS X, iLife, iWork and professional software. Apple leads the digital music revolution with its iPods and iTunes online store. Apple has reinvented the mobile phone with its revolutionary iPhone and App Store, and has recently introduced iPad 2 which is defining the future of mobile media and computing devices.
Another potential pitfall of having so much glass is its propensity to crack or shatter when knocked. However we've never experienced any such problems with any existing iPhone screens (though we have heard reports) so we see no reason why the glass front and back of the iPhone 4 should suffer unduly. Indeed, Apple has been quite happy to bash phones on tables and floors in various demonstrations we've seen and they've all remained spotless.
Moreover, in our experience, unlike plastic, glass screens are essentially scratch proof in normal use so using glass on the back as well will hopefully mean the iPhone 4 will look flawless for years to come, no matter how rough you treat it. Certainly we know many people that have not been overly careful yet own three year old iPhones that don't have a single scratch on the screen, which is more than can be said of the aluminium and plastic backs of said phones.
